In Their Own Words: The Inside Doesn’t Match The Outside

This post from this month’s In Their Own Words series comes from Dean, whose amazing mom I have the pleasure of seeing each year. Dean, like Asaf who shared an earlier post, works with Galilee Damiao of Accessible Expression Therapies. Accessible Expression Therapies is located in Chestnut Ridge, New York and provides support to individuals with complex communication needs and sensory motor challenges. Galilee has been so helpful in letting me share the voices of her students, and I am so touched by Dean’s powerful words. Any spellers who would like to correspond with or show support for the spellers of Accessible Therapies can do so by contacting Galilee. They would love to hear from readers of their work!

That I think I would like to be very linked to the intelligent people in this world is really an understatement. I have so much inspiration in understanding that I can become who I so want to become.

People who inside doesn’t match their outside are people like me.

Dean with his mom (Photo Credit: Filomena Laforgia)

People like me have lots to do to live a life that has meaning. I am living in a very important place. I am living in a place in which I could become the person I so want to be. In the powerful place that I am in, I yearn to become like me. In that place I feel found. In that powerful place I will be able to take the steps that I need to take, to travel to the life that I can build.

Needing to be so much who I am is essential to our humanity. I own the otherwise powerful place that is in me and also in my ability to say what I want to say.

Dean Laforgia is a 20-year-old student who recently underwent the great life change of really being able to communicate with the other people in his life by typing his thoughts. Dean is looking forward to being able to do the things he wants to do (which are quite different now with his newfound, sky’s-the-limit life!).